Fox hunt time-honored tradition dating back to the early 13th century

KIRBY KNOWLE, Yorkshire, England – The mounted pageantry of the fox hunt, depicted on colorful medieval tapestries, came to Britain from France after the Norman Conquest, luring kings and their guests out into the royal forests in pursuit of stag and boar. But chasing foxes is a time-honored tradition up here in the Yorkshire Dales. According to Baily’s Hunting Directory, the bible of British blood sports, the nearby Staintondale Hunt traces its history back to the early 13th century; legend has it that King John granted a charter in 1208 to local men to cull predatory wolves and foxes.

But the father of the modern fox hunt was probably the ne’er-do-well George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, who combined the sport of kings with the pursuit of predators in the late 17th century when he founded the Bilsdale Hunt, the first pack of hounds kept solely for the purpose of hunting foxes. More than three centuries later, the duke’s legacy is a thriving pack of 60, followed twice a week by some 40 mounted subscribers as well as assorted others who pay 30 pounds for a day of hard riding in pursuit of huntsman Harry Stephenson, his hounds and a fox or two across the spectacularly hilly, boggy dales that James Herriot made famous.

Better known for chasing skirts than foxes (Buckingham seduced the Countess of Shrewsbury, killed her husband in a duel and installed his freshly widowed mistress in his household), the duke may also have helped to give hunting a bad name. Diarist Samuel Pepys dismissed the philandering horseman as “a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a whore.” A century later, the Whig Party lampooned the country gentry who rode to hounds as witless toffs, slaves to their animal passions. And Jane Ridley, author of a history of hunting, says the caricature stuck: “Country gentleman equals Tory equals fox hunting equals stupid is an association of ideas which still persists.”

Fox hunters across the country haven’t forgotten about being called witless toffs. Today, nobody calls the fox “the fox.” He’s Charles James, so named after the 18th-century Whig prime minister Charles James Fox.